Amazon Web Services Acquires Cybersecurity Startup Sqrrl

Cybersecurity will always remain a big issue that computing companies such as Amazon Web Services will have to address every time they court potential clients. After all, these clients will want assurance that their sensitive data will remain secure when stored off premises.

With the discovery of the decades-old system flaws like Spectre and Meltdown, assuring clients on the safety of their data is even more challenging for players in the cloud computing business. However, it appears that AWS has this issue already covered. The tech giant recently acquired Sqrrl, a cybersecurity firm with ties to the master of cybersecurity itself —the NSA.

Rumors of the deal started circulating a few months ago thatAmazon was reportedlyeyeing to the startup, which specializes in advanced computer threat prevention and detection. However, the acquisition has now been confirmed by Sqrrl CEO Mark Terenzoni in a post made on the company's website.

“We’ve reached another milestone in our journey!,” Terenzoni announced in the post. “We’re thrilled to share that Sqrrl has been acquired by Amazon. We will be joining the Amazon Web Services family, and we’re looking forward to working together on customer offerings for the future.”

At the moment, details of the deal are not yet available to the public. However, previous reports place thedeal’s price tag to be around $40 million.

Of course, such a figure is not that much of a big deal to AWS who is still the leader in cloud computing. In the third quarter of 2017 alone, AWS posted a staggering $1.17 billion income from the $4.58 billion it generated in revenues.

Interestingly, the Sqrrl deal comes shortly after AWS announced plans to pick up more business from the U.S. intelligence agencies. In fact, the company revealed that it will be forming a “secret” region of data centers specifically to handle the cloud computing needs of these agencies.

Sqrrl already has ties with the NSA that date back to 2011. In 2012, it handled NSA’s open-source database software called Accumulo.